#extinction

If you are a natural bodybuilder on YouTube trying to make it big, prepare yourself to fight stealth mode for a long time.

Unlike the kids today, I wasn’t born with a Wi-Fi antenna in my mouth. I witnessed the birth of the Internet, Google, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, pagers, cell phones, smartphones…

I was already alive and breathing when they came here.
I was here before we started to communicate with our thumbs.
I was here before the walking smartphone zombies.

Let me tell you…

Right when I started to gain interest in the muscle game, YouTube began its ascension. At the time, there were only a handful of channels, and the clips were recorded with ancient VGA machinery and medieval optics.

Over the years, the muscle content on YouTube grew to epic proportions. Today, you get unlimited videos for a single keyword. This is understandable. There are only so many topics, and thus content duplication is unavoidable. Nevertheless, angry wage slaves from the entire world are uploading videos, hoping to make money and quit their 9 to 5 estrogen loaded jobs.

Here’s how the system operates. YouTube is divided into different niches. This reduces your competition from the entire world to a quarter of the world. In each segment, you are fighting a different type of mainstream monsters. When it comes to muscle, the last boss that you are going to face as a natural muscle constructor are the five trucks of fake natties uploading 24/7.

This is a problem because…

Who would watch your earthly videos when there is so much otherworldly content?

If this is not enough to break you down, there’s more.

Have you ever heard of the United Network of Fake Natties and Pinners? No!? Well, you are about to.

Fake natties and open roid users have developed a strong network which they use to support each other [hug]. They promote each other’s channels and products in exchange for favors and commissions. This is why the online muscle realm is infested with political correctness. No one wants to insult anyone in order to preserve present and future partnerships.

Guess, what? Until you build your name, you will not be a part of this network. Instead, you will be fighting it. I am sorry, but this is how the world works. Your name is not on the list, boy. Move back in line or prepare to eat punches.

The Media Needs Its Magnets

People think that the role of the media is to inform you. This is only partially true. The media is a businessman first and an informer second. Think of the popular TV channels, radio stations, magazines, newspapers and their online forms. Their goal is to attract visitors. If a show doesn’t attract visitors, it’s worthless. It’s a movie that no one wants to watch. You can’t make money when the seats are empty. You have to fill them. And you don’t fill them with regular heroes. You need unnatural ones to capture the attention of the crowd. Those are the magnets of the media. Without them, the informational business suffers.

In the world of muscle, the magnets are guys with big muscles and lean abs. As expected, you can’t be super big and lean as a natural. Therefore, the magnets can only be fake natties. Regular natties have a weaker, borderline nonexistent, magnetic field.

Here’s what you get when you write ”aesthetic natural bodybuilding” in YouTube’s search engine:

SO MUCH ”NATTINESS” IN ONE PLACE CAN CAUSE HARD ATTACKS

My experience as a natty or not officer tells me that most of the thumbnails above contain images of individuals with a highly questionable natural status. There could only be one explanation. Self-proclaimed fake natties and genetic wonders have taken over the fitness segment of YouTube. This creates various problems.

First, it’s harder for naturals to shine. Look, boy, nobody wants to see your 290lbs squat or 210lbs bench press, except maybe your college buddies. Nobody cares that you can a do muscle-up when you have 12-inch arms. You are not impressive. Your competition is miles ahead of you. You can’t match them. You can do 100 push-ups? Who cares? Kali Muscle will get 1000x more views if he uploads a 2-second clip of him doing the duck face. It’s real. No time for kidding, kid.

Do you remember the rise of CT Fletcher’s channel? Before he took over as Chief of YouTube Muscle, the only motion picture of him was his ”How to Bench by a Permabulker” video. But when he hit the YouTube realm with drama infested clips attacking the right hemisphere of the brain, the number of his subscribers began to increase faster than the bank account of a sports player. The support of other previously established channels helped a lot too. Do you think CT’s videos would have the same impact if he was a fragile natural? No.

Do you remember the channel of the HodgeTwins in the beginning? They were just two dudes producing raw, bedroom-quality clips every day. Over the years their physiques surprisingly evolved to the point where gyno started to form. Mystery? No.

What about the crew of aesthetic brahs? Are they supposed to be the epitome of natural bodybuilding? Give me a break. I don’t care that ”they are not that big.” This ”evidence” may be enough for the thousands of teens with semi-functioning brains browsing the Internet, but it ain’t good enough for veterans like me. As the song says: ”Oh Oh You can’t fool me, you don’t fool me.”

How can a natural compete with channels like that? It’s impossible. You will face a lot of frustration dealing with the community.

Furthermore, natties often receive comments similar to those below:

”Do you even lift, faggot!?”

”Try eating a sandwich, son!!!”

”Hahaha 300lbs squat!? I did that after a keg party when I was 10.”

”375lbs deadlift!? No wonder your back looks like it belongs to Mickey Mouse.”

Aggressive feedback is not the biggest issue, though. You don’t get paid to receive nice comments. You get paid for views. This is the real problem. Natties have poor ratings and earn less money.

Welcome to Muscle Capitalism

When you think about it, the effect described above is a direct result of capitalism.

Economists say that the best side of capitalism is its ability to create competition which in return generates products and services of higher value. If more people are competing to provide the ultimate service, there are two major winners – the customer and the companies that offer the best thing in town.

According to this principle, natties lose the capitalist war on YouTube because they fail to provide the best service to the customers [viewers].

In theory, the channels are meant to inform you how muscle construction and body fat obliteration are done. And we all know that fake natties often speculate and come up with ridiculous theories because their otherworldly physiques make them look like authorities. This is not the real service. We are not looking for information as much as we are looking for entertainment. And fake natties offer us the best clown/hero/Ferrari experience. Nobody wants to look at regular everyday cars. We want more. We need more. Fake natties satisfy our wishes for better or worse.

Capitalism has a downside. When a corporation becomes exceptionally large, it can simply eat the small fish and steer the wheel in the desired direction. Whoever has the bigger capital wins.

An example in the muscle world would be the web page T-Nation – a veteran muscle site with an enormous following. The page is growing every day because experts from the community are writing content for it 24/7. Most articles are produced by different authors. How is that even possible? Easy. The writers do it for promotion and a check. A small site cannot afford to pay for a daily article. The battle is not even close.

The same holds true for YouTube. You can’t be as competitive as channels that can afford better recording equipment, video editing, music mixing, expert consultation…etc. The crowd is attracted by flashy stuff. When you can’t provide it, you are forgotten.

Nevertheless, no one can stop you from uploading your videos on YouTube. Thousands of kids do it every day. But when you are not competitive in comparison to other channels, the effort and time invested in each clip may not be justifiable unless you are doing it as a hobby.

Still, I don’t want to be the one to kill all hope for those who aspire to become video content creators. That’s why I came up with E-Mu$$leand the following principles.

How To Generate Attention as A Natural Bodybuilder

On paper, attracting visitors/viewers is fairly simple. All you have to do is:

1.Choose a niche
2.Detect problems
3.Show people how to fix those problems
4.Add flavor to your content
5.Repeat until success…or death – whichever comes first.

You Gotta Have a Niche

Many YouTubers upload all kinds of nonsense videos. From unboxing to how-to-tie-your-laces videos. This strategy works for some, but even in that case the creator is operating in a niche – vlogging a.k.a. annoying people.

You need to narrow things down. Niches allow you to do that.

The benefit of having a niche is that it gives you focus and reduces the competition. Randomness rarely works. For example, it would be inappropriate for a beauty magazine to upload articles from the financial press. Luckily, we already have our niche – muscle and strength.

Note: When a niche is very large, you may even have to look for a niche within the niche.

Detect Problems and Fix Them

Valuable content fixes or at least exposes problems. If you know how to do something, show the world how it’s done. If you see something wrong, scream so that they can hear you.

In my opinion, this is the trickiest part. As you already know, YouTube has been supersaturated. This means that the subjects you can talk about are narrowing as we speak. Therefore, if you can add something unique to your movies, you better do it. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Just focus. There’s always something.

Bonus:Start a smart beef

The main principle behind the beef strategy is simple:

If they are not talking about you, spit in their face so that they start.

You have to be smart nonetheless. Sometimes this can get your channel deleted, especially if you are still a baby. Moreover, you need a unique character to keep moving forward.

Add Flavor to Your Content

You already have the basic formula for valuable content – you find a problem, possibly a solution, and present it to your audience. This is not enough. To win the crowd’s attention, you need to do more. You need to entertain people. You don’t want to present dry information without style. Therefore, the true and complete growth formula is:

(problem + solution) x entertainment = growth

Once you are done with the informational part, add flavor to your work. Show the world that you are not a robot.

To accomplish this task, you have to reevaluate every single skill you have. Write down everything you can do and abuse the hell out of your skills during the creation of your content. Don’t be afraid if at first, your work is a little cheesy or borderline shallow. At this point of the game, you are simply trying to find your style. It will take years to mature and take it to killer status.

Repeat

This is a cyclic process. You never get to rest, unfortunately. You have to be creating more and more content. This is one of the hardest parts, but it is a necessity if you want to grow. Spin the wheel.

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30 comments

I don’t understand the urge of starting a youtube channel especially if you are truly natural. The point is to really enjoy what you do and immerse yourself in the activity in my humble opinion. No need to be “loud” about it.

anyway, those channels are cancer for the simple reason that they are misleading. The other day a guy wanted to share his bro wisdom with me, he showed me as “proof” that you can add 50 kilos of solid muscle by just eating your macros and other bullshit, the mountain (the guy of game of thrones obviously on steroids). It would be cool to see just one natural bodybuilder channel going to the top to eliminate all the mass brainwashing thats being going on.

Ook. Start taking steroids and synthol and maybe if you do g4pyou will have wnough money for a shitty camera and a shitty network mobile. Then record tourself attempting to suicide . This would do the job, right babe???!

I really enjoyed the part with the Youtube-Comments.
You really get those comments below every video, where someone doesn´t move a shit ton of weights.
Stuff like “I benched 220 pounds” back when I was just 14 years old, after 3 months of training”. Usually those people don´t have any videos on their channels to back just anything up, they are telling.

Another excellent article, unfortunately this relates to me. Can you please check my channel out and give me some feedback. I have been thinking of my first cycle of steroids after watching Zyyz videos, people in general love roided up guys than natty.

Good article, but I will have some issues with the conclusion in a second…

To summarize your logic about cheating, which you have brilliantly expressed in several articles: “Why, if you are a natty at the top of Crossfit, would you not take PEDs and dominate? Why, if you are a natty with an amazing build, would you not go on gear and destroy in the IFBB?”

And that’s it. It’s not that *everyone* on YouTube would give into the temptation to cheat and lie; some would refuse roids on the basis of personal integrity or fear of health issues. But *enough* people would and do to bury anyone truly natural. Cheaters will dominate in any field unless there are systems in place to prevent them from doing so.

As for you conclusion, which seems to be that doing a muscle channel on YT is hella difficult but not hopeless… no, it really is hopeless. OK, there might be room for a *few* more truly natty channels if they are done with *true* originality and excellence. But that’s true of anything on YT. Could someone become the next Pewdiepie in Let’s Play? Realistically, no. Theoretically, sure.

And you yourself have shown in this blog that there is no royal road to muscle creation. There is no major technique that didn’t exist 40 years ago. So any potential YT channel is going to be BS, since telling people to eat right and do a few key exercises consistently is worth a few videos at most.

It’s harmful that there is close to none famous builders in mediaspace who are naturals. And most claiming to be natty are not truthfull.

BB industry is build on a lie. People who want to be builders can’t set realistic goals, they get frustrated, they turn to roids.

It would be very cool if natty builders just had one charismatic star on youtube. The natty star who’s 100% not on roids and don’t have that good of a genetics. So he could show what to look in a natural bodybuilding. All he needs is to be super charismatic, even if he isn’t all that good in BB. But natural. So people can see what a real natural look like and aspire to realistical natural goals.

fortunately im in the most advanced level of natural bodybuilding which is: i don’t care anymore!!! which means i no longer care if i build more muscle or not, it works because even when ill never look like those youtubers, i look better gradually than i used to without getting obsessed anymore looking for bodybuilding/fitness panacea cause it doesn’t exist (naturally) accept your genetics and move on, seriously when you don’t care, even the most generic you do in the very long term improves your overall look, it happens without noticing, but when you obsess it is like watching/waiting grass to grow. Nowadays i find it trully annoying to see those thumbnails in my youtube suggestions, everytime they look more extreme/more impressive, and yet im less interested on it, those tricks only work on the uninitiated, but we are initiated.

Everybody has worked hard to get to where they are. But nobody who is a somebody would have made it without the support of others. Average people support their above average peers, because they provide them with hope. Hope that their small worlds can change, and insignificant lives can become meaningful. Who cares that people on youtube are juicers and liars, they are just furfilling the needs of the public, the need for success. They represent what ordinary people cant achieve. But they were forced to become extraordinary because of the modern worlds desire for competition. And we are the ones preaching to our kids to be the best, fastest, greatest, smartest. So didnt we create the liars and steroid users on youtube, and arent we the ones viewing their videos nonetheless. We act like they are beneath us, becuase of their phoneyness, but in reality we are just as phony in other aspects of life. We are all liars in one aspect or another, and the world is one big lieing game. Either see the bigger picture, or doint see at all.

Yep. Tis that ol’ ongoing human tension between our mammal instincts and our self-aware rational capacity. Our mammal instinct recognizes what is “strong, healthy, reproductively superior, therefore attractive” and that part of us feels, “I want to look that way!”…yet, our rational consciousness recognizes what is “unrealistic, atypical, statistically improbable, artificially acheived, therefore unattainable” and that part of us realizes, “I’m an average-gened person who cannot look that way”.

So, we humans spout contradiction: “Never settle for mediocrity” and “Be all you can be” and “Follow your heart”…yet…”Winning isn’t everything” and “Accept yourself the way you are” and “Don’t go by feelings”. Our instincts drive us to do whatever it takes while our rational capacity tells us there’s no need to go that far. Neither as individuals nor as collectives do we humans ever escape that tug-of-war in life.

Rich Piana has never claimed to be natural. I don’t know why you featured him on there. Actually as a natural athlete I value his content because he gives a lot of insight as to why people take steroids and how to do it safely.

Hard work and persistence pays off, I am 52 turning 53
in a month, and I am not huge, but I look younger
and healthier then Mr Olympia and Mr Universe winners that are in my age bracket.
At least the ones that are lucky enough to be alive.
I was appalled at the amount of my earlier idols
that have died at such an early age, cheated out of life
by steroids.
I had a dream to compete when I was young, but
knew I couldn’t compete with steroids, so I worked
out for my self as Lou Ferrigno says.
But I am in great shape, and strangers tell me I look great all the time, My shoulders and neck and traps aren’t massive, But I try to keep lean with the muscles I have and the cut appearance makes you look bigger.
the main goal is to live as long as possible, not dead at 40 or 70, with out a long quality of life, what is the point.

Totally agree about muscle capitalism. What’s worst is that we’re all so deeply in this sh*t you can’t even see out of it — most of us just end up playing the game. Spot-on about the YTers you called out.